Christopher Rowe
Sandstorm
Chapter One
In the name of the most holy Great Scrivener,
I declare my tales to be true.
Even in late spring, the only colors visible on the upland wall of the remote canyon of the Omlarandin Mountains were shades of red and brown. The vines that grew from cracks in the rock would flower soon, but then the petals would be a red so dark as to be nearly black, the color of blood drying on sand.
The enormous rocky fastness floating in midair out in the canyon was hewn from the same rock as the steep walls and was just as red. The goblins, bandits, and slaves swarming over it were dressed in leathers or rough hemp robes, so there was no color amid the rabble to distract the eye, either.
Nevertheless, from the deep cleft where he lay, spying on the earthmote, the old man took in everything with his blue eyes.
Seeing that nothing had changed out in the canyon since the last time he risked an observation, he closed his eyes to narrow slits again. This slight movement was the only motion he allowed himself.
The old man was confident that no one in the hidden floating village had the slightest inkling they were under his watch. He flattered himself that his stealth and quiet were such that he might as well have been invisible. He doubted, even, that he could have tracked himself, and Mattias Farseer was one of the finest trackers on the continent.
“Lovely perch you’ve found for yourself, old friend,” said a voice from behind him.
Mattias’s arm moved with the speed of thought, seeking the hilt of the broadsword concealed in the vines beside him on the ledge. His fingers brushed an empty scabbard, and he loosed a silent curse. But by then, he knew he was in no danger.
Gathering his heavy yew canes and slowly rolling up from his prone position to a crouch, Mattias turned his back on the earthmote hanging in the canyon for the first time in almost a month. Even if he wasn’t confident that the bandit freedmen were too busy making arrangements for their evening’s barbaric entertainment, his partner’s seeming nonchalance would have told him there was no risk of discovery.
Seem, Mattias thought, was no word for a hunter.
For an assassin, like the leather-armored figure slipping from the shadows in the cliff wall recess, “seem” was a very apt word. One of the ebony-feathered, crow-headed people known as kenku, Corvus Nightfeather seemed like a creature out of a fanciful picture in a children’s primer. His uncanny ability to move from shadow to shadow made him seem like a ghost. When he wished to, the kenku could even seem harmless.
Corvus extended his hand, Mattias’s sword held casually in the black talons extending from the shorn fingertips of his gloves. “Couldn’t risk falling victim to your reflexes, Mattias. They’re still sharp-even if your wits have grown addled in your dotage.”
The hunter had traveled the South with Corvus Nightfeather for decades, but the kenku race remained as mysterious to him as it did to most of the civilized world. Mattias had no idea whether he would be considered old among the crow people, and, indeed, he had no idea how many years Corvus had stalked the world. He did know when he was being mocked.
“You found one of the message cairns I left for you on the rim,” Mattias said. “How long have you been looking for me?”
The kenku shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Three days,” he said. “I was on the verge of sending for Trill.”
“It’s good you didn’t,” said Mattias. “Stealth is not exactly her strong suit, and you haven’t yet even heard my report on this Jazeerijah.”
The kenku turned his head sharply, the setting sun catching the oiled feathers around his eyes in such a way that they briefly reflected the dark green of his armor. “Jazeerijah, hah!” The high-pitched caw of Corvus’s laughter could still make Mattias shudder. “Is that what they call it?”
“It’s from an Alzhedo dialect, I gather,” said Mattias, “though they speak the common tongue to their slaves and the scum that visit them. I don’t know what it means, but I’d be willing to bet you do.”
“Jazeerijah. ‘Island of the Free,’ ” Corvus said. “It’s from one of the Founding Stories of Calimshan. ‘Helpful Janna Stops the Sea from Draining,’ I think.”
“Well, by their dress and ways, the folk in charge out on that floating rock are definitely Calishites. And it’s odd you mention those stories, because-”
A shout out in the canyon echoed through the air. Most of the population of the ramshackle village of huts and tents had clustered on the rim of the floating island of rock, human bandits mixing freely with tribal goblins. A knot of these sallow-skinned visitors pushed a primitively constructed crate toward the edge, following the directions of a chanting shaman. They stopped only when the wooden box was teetering on the rim.
“What am I seeing here, Mattias?” asked Corvus.
Mechanical sounds rang across the canyon, as chains turned through geared teeth and an enormous field of sailcloth was swiftly stretched between rocky outcrops on the earthmote and on the canyon rims.
“You’re seeing that we’re not the only showmen in these mountains tonight, Ringmaster,” Mattias answered. “You’re seeing that when those Calishites escaped their former owners, they brought their deadly games out of the desert with them.”
The kenku’s face was incapable of rendering anything like a human expression, but Mattias knew the soft clicking deep in Corvus’s beak indicated contemplation.
“They escaped the gladiatorial slave pits and decided to be enslaving gamemasters themselves? Humans never fail to impress me with their … humanity. What of the man I sent you to find?”
The old hunter indicated an open-faced shed perched at the very edge of the earthmote. Calishites armed with spears prodded a tall young man with a smooth scalp into a swinging leather net hung from a tautly wound catapult. His bronzed skin was traced with the distinctive gold lines that marked him as genasi. His muscles showed through piecemeal scale, and his gauntleted hands held an enormous double-headed flail.
“If the odds hold that the goblin bookmakers are chalking on their board,” Mattias told Corvus, “we’re about to watch him die.”
Cephas imagined that freedom must feel something similar to the way he did when he spun through the air above the Canvas Arena. Only in those times, in the scant few heartbeats that passed between the moment the freedmen forced him into the sling and the moment he hit the canvas to face whatever fresh nightmare they’d found to torment him with, did this lightness and calm fill him.
It filled him only in those times, or when he made one of his endless attempts to escape.
He always had to abandon the feeling, whichever kind of flight brought it-abandon it or die.
He had even less time to savor the feeling than usual, since the freedman manning the catapult had aimed it so that he would fall precisely atop the mysterious crate the warriors of the Bloody Moon goblin tribe had rolled onto the canvas. It burst apart as he fell, and the contents were a mystery no longer.
Up in the gamemaster’s box, the master of Jazeerijah, Azad the Free, took his usual place. “The omlarcat!” the Calishite called, his magically amplified voice drowning out even the challenging scream of the beast. “Deadliest predator in these mountains, never faced in the arena before today! By authority of the sages, it is untouchable by blades and invulnerable to arrows.”
The old orc woman who preceded Cephas as the mightiest fighter in the Calishites’ slave pens, Grinta the Pike, had warned him about omlarcats.
“Like a black panther,” she said, “but worse.” She said that in other parts of the world the great predators such as the one on the canvas before him were called “displacer beasts.” The omlarcat was the particular breed that hunted the deepest parts of these Omlarandin Mountains. Cephas had never seen a black panther, but he suspected they did not have pairs of spiked tentacles dancing from their shoulders. He also suspected that panthers were not nearly as canny as omlarcats, and that they did not shimmer with a fey magic that made it difficult to tell where they crouched, even when bent over some hapless victim.